I'm happy to take on the position of editor in chief of IJMO. It's a journal that shows promise of becoming a recognized journal in the area of modelling and optimization. I'll work together with the editors to help it progress.

Abstract—A significant quantity of the Venezuelan satellite communications services operate at Ka band for the Amazonian Region. The Ka Band signals are exposed to severe quality degradation and unacceptable error rate capabilities due to climate constrains. In order to improve the error rate performance, an Amplify and Forward (AF) cooperative scheme is proposed. The basic principle is based on the relay of multiple scaled version of the received signal at the destination, which can be optimally combined at the receiver using a Maximum Ratio Combiner (MRC). The performance of the satellite-terrestrial AF cooperative system is compared with the direct satellite transmission system by simulation.

Index Terms—AF, BER, Ka Band, MRC, SNR.

The authors are with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beihang University, China (e-mail: gaoqiang@buaa.edu.cn).